The prior art has seen a wide variety of aerial armament and weaponry ranging from the early World War I planes in which the pilots simply dropped bricks, or tossed grenades, or else fired their side fire arms at opposing pilots to the bombers employing bomb bays and other internal store load and ejector devices. One of the developments has been the use of smaller, less costly fighter-bomber, or fighter type aircraft to perform limited missions and then employ external store loading and ejector devices for extending the range of missions on which the planes could be used. These have included struts, pylons and, most recently, T-shaped store load and ejector devices. These latter T-shaped struts, or pylons, had a fairly large base that affixed to the load bearing points, called hard points, on the aircraft. For example, they might be connected to a wing hard point with bolts or the like. Extending downwardly from the T-shaped base would be a strut, or pylon that has a prism shaped accessory or ejector rack at its lower extremity for attachment thereto and dispensing therefrom of a plurality of stores, e.g., bombs. To carry a plurality of stores the racks typically include a clutter of attachment means or members extending inefficiently out into the airstream from the pylon for bracing and arming the stores. These include bracing arms and bolts, extension plates, arming cables, etc. which undesirably cause high, permament aerodynamic drag. This also has disadvantages of being heavy and presenting a large radar profile, or cross-section, so that it was easily visible to radar. Also, certain prior art devices have necessitated a partially sidewise ejection path as the store is being released and have not permitted fully selective release of the stores carried. For example, for some combinations of stores carried, certain of the stores had to be ejected before others which in event of malfunction may require ejection and thus loss of the ejector rack itself. It is desirable that an effecient externally carried store load and ejector device have the following features not heretofore provided.
1. The store load and ejector device should be relatively lightweight, viz., lighter in weight relative to stores it is able to carry than those heretofore available.
2. It should have lower permament drag on the aircraft so as not to interfere with performance or significantly reduce the speed, maneuverability or range of the aircraft.
3. It should have a low radar cross section, or radar profile, so as to prevent being easily tracked by radar.
4. It should have the flexibility of carrying a few large bombs or several smaller bombs, not limited to two or three small bombs as in the prior art and full selectivity in stores release so that any of the stores can be released (dispensed) while retaining any other at the pilot's option.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that the prior art has failed to provide such combined features.